"Buenos Dias le de Dios, abuelo.” God
give you a good day, grandfather. This is how I was taught as a child to
greet my grandfather, or any grown person. It was a greeting of respect, a
cultural value to be passed on from generation to generation, this respect
for the old ones.

The old people I remember from my childhood
were strong in their beliefs, and as we lived daily with them we learned a
wise path if life to follow. They had something important to share with the
young, and when they spoke the young listened. These old abuelos and
abuelitas had worked the earth all their lives, and so they knew the value of
nurturing, they knew the sensitivity of the earth. The daily struggle called
for cooperation, and so every person contributed to the social fabric, and
each person was respected for his contribution.

The old ones had looked deep into the web that
connects all animate and inanimate forms of life, and they recognized the
great design of creation.

These ancianos from the cultures of the Rio Grande, lived side by side, sharing, growing together, they
knew the rhythms and cycles of time, from the preparation of the earth in the
spring to the digging of the acequias that bought
the water to the dance of harvest in the fall. They shared good times and
hard times. They helped each other through epidemics and the personal
tragedies, they shared what little they had when the winds burned the land
and no rain came. They learned that to survive one had to share in the
process of life.

Hard workers all, they tilled the earth and
farmed, ran the herds and spun wool, and carved their saints and their kachinas from cottonwood late in the winter nights. All
worked with a deep faith which perplexes the modern mind.

Their faith shone in their eyes; it was in
the strength of their grip, in the creases time wove into their faces. When
they spoke, they spoke plainly and with few words, and they meant what they
said. When they prayed, they went straight to the source of life. When there
were good times, they knew how to dance in celebrations and how to prepare
the foods of the fiestas. All this they passed on to the young, so that a new
generation would know what they had known, so the string of life would not be
broken.

Today we would say that the old abuelitos
lived authentic lives.

Newcomers to New Mexico often say that time
seems to move slowly here. I think they mean that they have come in contact
with the inner strength of the people, a strength so solid it causes time itself
to pause. Think of it. Think of the high northern New Mexico villages, or the
lonely ranches on the open llano. Think of the Indian pueblo which lies as
solid as rock in the face of time. Remember the old people whose eyes seem like
windows that peer into the distant past that makes absurdity of our
contemporary world. That is what one feels when one encounters the old ones
and their land, a pausing of time.

We have all felt time stand still. We have
all been in the presence of power, the knowledge of the old ones, the
majestic peace of a mountain stream or an aspen grove or red buttes rising
into blue sky. We have all felt the light of dusk permeate the earth and
cause time to pause in its flow.

I felt this when I first touched the spirit
of Ultima, the old curandera
who appears in my first novel, Bless Me, Ultima.
This is how the young Antonio describes what he feels:

When she came
the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of
the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood
stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my
living blood. She took my hand, and the silent, magical powers she possessed
made beauty from the raw, sun-baked llano, the green river valley, and the
blue bowl which was the white sun’s home. My bare feet felt the throbbing earth,
and my body trembled with excitement. Time stood still…

At other times, in other places,
when I have been privileged to be with the old ones, to learn, I have felt
this inner reserve of strength from which they draw. I have been held
motionless and speechless by the power of curanderas.
I have felt the same power when I hunted with Cruz, high on the Taos Mountain,
where it was more than the incredible beauty of the mountain bathed in
morning light, more that the shining of the quivering aspen, but a connection
with life, as if a shining strand of light connected the particular and the
cosmic. That feeling is an epiphany of time, a standing still of time.

But not all of our old ones are curanderos or hunters on the mountain. My grandfather was
a plain man, a fan from the valley called Puerto de Luna on Pecos River. He
was probably a descendant of those people who spilled over the mountain from
Taos, following the Pecos River search of farmland. There in that river
valley he settled and raised a large family.

Bearded and walrus-mustached, he stood five
feet tall, but to me as a child he was a giant. I remember him most for his
silence. In the summers my parents sent me to live with him on his farm, for
I was to learn the ways of a farmer. My uncles also lived in that valley,
there where only the flow of the river and the
whispering of the wind marked time. For me it was a magical place.

I remember once, while out in the fields, I
came upon an anthill, and before I knew it I was badly bitten. After he had
covered my welts with the cool mud from the irrigation ditch, my grandfather
calmly said: “Know where you stand.” That is the way he spoke, in short
phrases, to the point.

One very dry summer, the river dried to a
trickle, there was no water for the fields. The young plants withered and
died. In my sadness and with the impulse of youth I said, “I wish it would
rain!” My grandfather touched me, looked up into the sky and whispered, “Pray
for rain.” In his language there was a difference. He felt connected to the
cycles that brought the rain or kept it from us. His prayer was a meaningful
action, because he was a participant with the forces that filled our world,
he was not a bystander.

A young man died at the village one summer. A
very tragic death. He was dragged by his horse. When he was found I cried,
for the boy was my friend. I did not understand why death had come to one so
young. My grandfather took me aside and said: “Think of the death of the
trees and the fields in the fall. The leaves fall, and everything rests, as
if dead. But they bloom again in the spring. Death is only this small transformation
in life.”

These are the things I remember, these
fleeting images, few words.

I remember him driving his horse-drawn wagon
into Santa Rosa in the fall when he brought his harvest produce to sell in
the town. What a tower of strength seemed to come in that small man huddled
on the seat of the giant wagon. One click of his tongue and the horses
obeyed, stopped or turned as he wished. He never raised his whip. How unlike
today when so much teaching is done with loud words and threatening hands.

I would run to greet the wagon, and the wagon
would stop. “Buenos Dias le de Dios, abuelo,” I would say. “Buenos Dias te de Dios, mi hijo,” he would
answer and smile, and then I could jump up on the wagon and sit at his side.
Then I, too, became a king as I rode next to the old man who smelled of earth
and sweat and the other deep aromas from the orchards and fields of Puerto de
Luna.

We were all sons and daughters to him. But
today the sons and daughters are breaking with the past, putting aside los
abuelitos.’ The old values are threatened, and threatened most where it comes
to these relationships with the old people. If we don’t take the time to
watch and feel the years of their final transformation, a part of our
humanity will be lessened.

I grew up speaking Spanish, and oh! how difficult it was to learn English. Sometimes I give up
and cry out that I couldn’t learn. Then he would say, “Ten paciencia.” Have patience. Paciencia,
a word with the strength of centuries, a word that said that someday we would
overcome. Paciencia, how soothing a word coming
from this old man who could still sling hundred-pound bags over his shoulder,
chop wood for hundreds of hours on end, and hitch up his own horses and ride
to town and back in one day.

“You have to learn the language of the Americanos,” he said. “Me, I will live my last days in my
valley. You will live in a new time, the time of the gringos.”

A new time did come, a new time is here. How
will we form it so it is fruitful? We need to know where we stand. We need to
speak softly and respect others, and to share what we have. We need to pray
not for material gain, but for rain for the fields, for the sun to nurture
growth, for nights in which we can sleep in peace, and for a harvest in which
everyone can share. Simple lessons from a simple man. These lessons he
learned from his past, which was as deep and strong as the currents of the
river of life, a life which could be stronger than death.

He was a man; he died. Not in his valley, but
nevertheless cared for by his sons and daughters and flocks of grandchildren.
At the end, I would enter his room, which carried the smell of medications
and Vicks. Gone were the aromas of the fields, the strength of his young
manhood. Gone also was his patience in the face of crippling old age. Small
things bothered him; he shouted or turned sour when his expectations were not
met. It was because he could not care for himself, because he was returning to
that state of childhood, and all those wishes and desires were now wrapped in
a crumbling old body.

“Ten paciencia,” I
once said to him, and he smiled. “I didn’t know I would grow this old,” he
said.

I would sit and look at him and remember what
was said of him when he was a young man. He could mount a wild horse and
break it, and he could ride as far as any man. He could dance all night at a
dance, then work the acequia
the following day. He helped the neighbors, they helped him. He married,
raised children. Small legends, the kind that make up everyman’s life.

He was ninety-four when he died. Family,
neighbors, and friends gathered; they all agreed he had led a rich life. I
remembered the last years, the years he spent in bed. And as I remember now,
I am reminded that it is too easy to romanticize old age. Sometimes we forget
the pain of the transformation into old age, we
forget the natural breaking down of the body. Not all go gentle into the last
years, some go crying and cursing, forgetting the names of those they love
the most, withdrawing into an internal anguish few of us can know. May we be
granted the patience and care to deal with our ancianos.

For some time we haven’t looked at these
changes and needs of the old ones. The American image created by the mass
media is an image of youth, not of old age. It is the beautiful and the young
who are praised in this society. If analyzed carefully, we see that same
damaging thought has crept into the way society views the old. In response to
the old, the mass media have just created old people who act like the young. It
is only the healthy, pink-cheeked, outgoing, older persons we are shown in
the media. And they are always selling something, as if an entire generation
of old people were salesmen in their lives. Commercials show very lively old
men, who must always be in excellent health according to the new myth,
selling insurance policies or real estate as they are out golfing; older
women selling coffee or toilet paper to those just married. That image does
not illustrate the real life of old ones.

Real life takes into account the natural
cycle of growth and change. My grandfather pointed to the leaves falling from
the tree. So time brings with its transformation the often painful,
wearing-down process. Vision blurs, health wanes even the act of walking
carries with it the painful reminder of the autumn of life. But this process
is something to be faced, not something to be hidden away by false images. Yes,
the old can be young at heart, but in their own way, with their own dignity.
They do not have to copy the always-young image of the Hollywood star.

My grandfather wanted to return to his valley
to die. But by then the families of the valley had left in search of a better
future. It is only now that there seems to be a return to the valley, a
revival. The new generation seeks its roots, that
value of love for the land moves us to return to the place where our ancianos
formed the culture.

I returned to Puerto de Luna last summer, to
join the community in a celebration of the founding of the church. I drove by
my grandfather’s home, my uncles’ ranches, the neglected adobe washing down
into the earth from whence it came. And I wondered,
how might the values of my grandfather’s generation live in our own? What can
we retain to see us through these hard times? I was to become a farmer, and I
became a writer. As I plow and plant my words, do I nurture as my grandfather
did in his fields and orchards? The answers are not simple.
“They don’t make men like that anymore,” is a phrase we hear when one does
honor to a man. I am glad I knew my grandfather. I am glad there are still
times when I can see him in my dreams, hear him in my reverie. Sometimes I
think I catch a whiff of that earthy aroma that was his smell. Then I smile.
How strong these people were to leave such a lasting impression.
So, as I would greet my abuelo long ago, it would help us all to greet the
old ones we know with this kind and respectful greeting: “Buenos Dias le de
Dios.”